by Nicci French
'Sorry. I didn't mean to… I'm just worried and I'd be really grateful if you could help me.'
'Has he dumped you or something?'
'What?' For a ghastly moment I thought that perhaps Brendan had even got to his sister before me and told her his version of our relationship.
'Why else would you come running to me for help?' She lowered herself on to the sofa with her son, and the other child immediately clambered on to her lap too and pushed her sticky face into the folds of her neck. Susan seemed not to notice. She picked up the remote control and flicked through channels randomly before saying, 'Not for ages. We've gone our separate ways. He's got his life and I've got mine. Why? What's it to you?'
'Like I said, I know Simon. I've known him for nearly a year now. And I'm a bit worried about him.' I sat down on the edge of the sofa. 'I think he might not be very well.'
'Are you a doctor?' She flicked away the lollipop that was being waved in front of her face as if she were swatting a fly.
'No.'
'He should go to a doctor. What am I supposed to do about it. He's a grown-up.'
'I don't mean ill like that – I mean… well, his behaviour has been rather disturbing and
'Oh. I see. You mean ill in the head, do you? Mmm?' She suddenly sounded like Brendan.
'I'm not sure. That's why I wanted to talk to you.'
'There's nothing wrong with Si.' She stood up with surprising agility and the children fell back into the depths of the sofa, letting out yelps of surprise. 'Who do you think you are?'
'I didn't…'
'Get out!'
'I just want to help,' I lied.
The anger suddenly went out of her. 'I could do with a fag,' she said. She picked a video up from the side table and slid it into the player under the TV. Cartoon characters ran across the screen. She turned the sound up high and then, reaching up to a shelf, brought down a tin of biscuits and fished out three chocolate bourbons which she pushed into three eager hands.
I followed her into the kitchen where she sat down heavily on a chair. She poured herself a large glass of fizzy lemonade and lit a cigarette.
'Is he in trouble?'
'I don't know,' I said cautiously, aiming for a vague and misleading truthfulness. 'It's more that I want to prevent trouble, if you see what I mean. So I thought I'd come here and just talk to someone who knew him before he got taken into care.'
'What?'
'I thought…?'
'Care?' Her laugh was a high, thick wheeze. 'Where did you get that idea from?'
'You mean, he didn't get sent away?'
'Why would he, with our mum and then our nan there to look after us? We were never in care. You should be careful what you say.'
'I must have got the wrong end of the stick,' I said in a placating tone.
She pulled on her cigarette and then released a trail of blue smoke.
'Si wasn't a bad boy,' she said.
'What about school?'
'Overton. What about it? He was good at lessons, but he hated people telling him what to do or criticizing him. He could have done all right if they hadn't…' She stopped.
'If what?'
'Never mind.'
'Did they punish him?'
'They don't like boys like him being clever.'
'He was expelled?'
She ground out her cigarette, swilled back the remains of her lemonade and stood up. 'I'd better see what they're up to in there,' she said.
I stared at her. 'What happened then, Susan?'
'You can see yourself out.'
'Susan, please. What did he do after he was expelled?'
'Who are you anyway?'
'I told you, I know Brendan.'
'Brendan? Brendan? What is all this?'
'Simon, I meant.'
'I've had enough of people poking their noses into our business. Live and let live, I say. I don't believe you want to help Si, anyway. You're just snooping.'
Again, with that word, uttered with such hostility, I heard a weird echo of Brendan. He might have left his past, changed his name, reinvented himself utterly, and yet still at some deep level he remained connected to it all.
'Get out of my house,' she said. 'Go on. Fuck off before I call the police.'
So I left, out into the fresh air and a sky that was clearing after heavy rain, with blue on the horizon and the deep grey separating out into clouds. I drank some water and popped a Polo into my mouth then started the van. I headed back the way I'd come, through the gleaming wet streets, but after a few minutes stopped again. Brendan didn't let things go, I thought grimly. Never.
I wound down the window and when a woman walked past I leaned out and said, 'Excuse me, could you tell me where Overton High School is?'
Children were coming out of school, weighed down by backpacks, carrying musical instruments and PE bags. I sat and watched them for a few minutes, unsure what I was doing here. Then I got out of the van and wandered over to a couple of women standing by their cars chatting.
'Sorry to bother you,' I said.
They looked at me expectantly.
'I'm moving to the area,' I said. 'And my children – well, I was wondering whether you'd recommend this school?'
One of them shrugged. 'It's all right,' she said.
'Does it do well academically?'
'All right. Nothing to write home about. Your Ellie does well, though, doesn't she?' she said to the other woman.
'Is there much bullying?'
'There's bullying in every school.'
'Oh,' I said, stumped. Then: 'I had a friend who came here about, let's see, twelve or thirteen years ago. He mentioned something about an episode.'
'What d'you mean?'
'I can't remember now what it was, exactly. Just, he said something…' I allowed my words to trail away.
'I don't know. Things are always happening.'
'That'd be the fire,' said the other woman. 'It was before our time of course, but people still talk about it.'
I turned to her, my skin prickling. 'Fire?'
'There was a fire here,' she said. 'You can see. A whole Year Eleven classroom was burnt to the ground, and half the IT area.'
She pointed across the yard to a low red-brick building that was newer than the rest of the school.
'How awful,' I said. I felt hot and then cold all over. 'How did it happen?'
'Never caught no one. Probably kids fooling around. Awful what they get up to nowadays, isn't it? There's Ellie now.' She raised an arm to a lanky girl in plaits walking our way.
'So no one was caught?'
'Good luck with the move,' said one of them over her shoulder. 'Maybe see you again, if you decide to come here.'
I got back into the van and put another Polo into my mouth. I sucked on it, feeling its circle become thinner and thinner until it broke and dissolved. I turned on the ignition, but still sat with the engine idling, staring at the new classroom, imagining a blaze of leaping orange flames. Simon Rees's revenge. I shivered in the warmth. Like a sign I knew how to read, like graffiti scrawled on the wall: Brendan woz 'ere.
CHAPTER 34
Don was his own worst enemy, in all sorts of ways. He smoked too much. He kept irregular hours. He existed in a general state of vagueness which I began to think was largely deceptive, but not entirely. When I was sealing the floor, he wandered in with two mugs and I had to wave him back before he caused disaster. I joined him out in the corridor and he handed me a coffee and started thinking aloud about other things that needed doing in his flat. Did I think the window frames looked a bit worn? (Yes, I did.) Could anything be done about the cracks in the living room door? (Yes, if money were no object.) I sniffed at the strong black coffee to try to rid myself of the resinous reek of the floor lacquer.
'It's dangerous to think of things as you go along,' I said. 'That's how costs spiral out of control.'
'I've heard that,' Don said, sipping his coffee. 'The problem is that it's easier to think up idea
s once the work has started. Don't you find that?'
I shook my head.
'There's always more you can do,' I said. 'Always something else that can be fixed. What I like is getting a job finished.'
'You don't want more work?'
'That's a funny thing,' I said. 'I have this feeling that not only I should be working at the moment. Shouldn't you be as well?'
Don looked a bit shifty.
'I have this problem,' he said. 'I suffer from attention deficit disorder.'
'Is that a real illness?'
'It's more like an excuse with a long name. This is my day when I work from home.'
'Does this count as work?'
'It's fallow time. I think and write and make plans.'
'What do you do the rest of the time?'
'Bits of teaching, I see some patients, other stuff.'
'You look too young for that,' I said.
'You mean "immature"?'
'You should learn to take a compliment,' I said. 'I was saying I was impressed.'
'I think it's cleverer to be able to do what you do,' he said.
'You don't know the half of it. Remember Brendan, that man I told you about?'
'Yes.'
'I found his sister. She lives in a council house in Chelmsford.'
'You went to see her?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
I couldn't think of a short answer, so I told him what I'd done. I told him how Brendan wasn't his real name, about what he did to his school.
'Isn't that scary?'
'Are you scared yourself?'
'Me?' I shook my head. 'This isn't about me. This is about other people, don't you see?'
'It's hard to tell.'
'You said yourself he sounded dangerous. And look at all the signs.'
'Maybe.'
'He set fire to his school. Would you admit that that's a symptom of mental disturbance?'
'You didn't say what happened. Was he charged with arson? Did he receive any kind of treatment?'
I took a deep breath.
'He was never caught.'
'Did the sister tell you he did it?'
'Reading between the lines, it's obvious. Can't you see the pattern? Everything fits. Is it true or is it not true that setting fires as a child is one of the earlier signs of being a psychopath?'
I'd finished my coffee and Don gently took the mug from my hand.
'This conversation isn't going the way I planned,' he said.
'What do you mean?'
'I was going to work my way around to saying that it's fun having you working here and how I wondered if we could have a drink some time. I was also going to say at the same time that you probably get hassled all the time like this. Maybe I was also going to apologize as well because perhaps it's difficult for a woman like you because you can't do your job without being harassed by people like me.'
I couldn't help smiling at this.
'Instead I started going on about this psychopath I used to know.'
'That's the thing,' said Don. 'I don't want to offend you.'
'I'm not easily offended.'
Don paused and looked at me as if he were trying to decide if I were telling the truth.
'I worry that you misunderstood what I told you before.'
'Why do you worry?'
'I don't think you should have gone to see those women.'
'You think it's dangerous?'
He took a sip of his coffee and then gave an expression of disgust.
'Cold,' he said. 'You should be careful about interfering in other people's lives.'
'I've told you,' I said, with a harder tone in my voice. 'Brendan is dangerous. Do you disagree?'
'There are colleagues of mine who carry out assessments for social workers about children who are at risk. Every so often a child will be murdered and the social workers and the psychiatrists and the police will be blamed in the press for having known the child was in danger and not having acted before. What the press won't mention is the hundreds and thousands of other children who are also in that grey area of being poor, vulnerable, threatened, hopeless. But most of them will turn out more or less all right. There's no magic checklist, Miranda. You wouldn't believe how many people I see who are on the edge. You can tick all the boxes. They have been bullied and beaten and sexually abused. Yes, they may have set fires. Whatever the profilers say, that doesn't make you Jack the Ripper. Above all, he's out of your life and it's not your business any more.'
'Don, if you had sold a car and then you got a report that there was something dangerous about it, that the brakes didn't work, would you just forget about it? Would it not be your business?'
Don looked genuinely troubled by this.
'I don't know, Miranda. I want to say that I admire you for doing this. You're being a good Samaritan. Better than that, you're being a good Samaritan for someone you don't know. I just want to say two things. The first is that people aren't like cars. And the second is, what are you actually going to do?'
'It's very simple,' I said. 'I want to find out if he's going out with anybody else. If he is, then she will be at risk and I'll warn her.'
'She may not be grateful,' said Don. 'A gesture like that could be misconstrued.'
'That doesn't matter,' I said. 'I'm not easily embarrassed.'
'And you may be putting yourself in danger.'
When he said this, I felt a shiver go through me. It wasn't apprehension, though, more like a surge of exhilaration. I had a strange sense of stepping out of my life and all the things that trapped me.
'That's not important,' I said to Don.
'Will you be careful?'
'Yes,' I said, meaning no. I would not be careful; I would be unstoppable.
I wanted to find Brendan without his knowing I'd found him. It was more difficult than I expected. I phoned an old friend of Laura's called Sally, whom I'd seen at the funeral. I guessed that she'd been in touch recently. Her tone became awkward and constrained when I identified myself. Obviously she must have heard some version or other of the tangled relationships between Brendan, Laura and me. Did they feel sorry for me? Did they think I was to blame in some way? I hardly gave it a thought. I told her I wanted to get in touch with Brendan. Was he living in Laura's flat? She said that she didn't think so, but that I should check with Laura's parents.
I phoned Laura's parents. I talked to Laura's mother. She sounded tired and spoke slowly as if she had been woken from sleep in the middle of the day. She was probably on something, the poor woman. Like my mother. I told her my name and that I was an old friend of Laura's.
'Yes,' she said. 'I think Laura mentioned your name.'
'I was at the funeral,' I said. 'I'm so sorry. It's a terrible thing.'
'Thank you,' she said, as if I had paid her a compliment.
'I wanted to get in touch with Brendan,' I said. 'I wondered if you might know where I could reach him.'
'I don't know,' she said.
'Is he staying in Laura's flat?'
'No,' she said. 'It's being sold.'
'I'm sorry for bothering you, but do you have an address for him?'
'We haven't seen him. He said he needed to go away.'
I couldn't believe that Brendan had left his parents-in-law without even a forwarding address. What would happen with Laura's estate? Would he get half of it? All? But these weren't questions I could pursue with Laura's numb, mourning mother. I could think of only one thing to do, but I felt a lurch of apprehension as I did it. I phoned Detective Inspector Rob Pryor and indeed he sounded a long way from pleased to hear from me.
'Don't worry,' I said. 'I've just got a simple question. I know you've become friendly with Brendan. I need to get in touch with him and I wondered if you could tell me where he is?'
'Why?'
'What do you mean "why"? Is it such a big deal?'
'You told me I should be investigating him for – what? – murder? Why do you want to see him?'
&
nbsp; 'Are you his receptionist? I just need an address.' There was a pause. 'All right,' I said. 'I've got some stuff he left behind in a flat he lived in.'
'Your flat?'
'A flat.'
'How did you get it?'
'What is all this?' I said. 'What business is this of yours?'
'I don't know what's going on with you, Miranda, but I think you should give it up and move on.'
'I just want his address.'
'Well, I'm not going to give it to you.' Another pause. 'I'll tell him to call you. If I speak to him.'
'Thank you.'
'And don't call me again.'
I put the phone down. That hadn't gone very well.
CHAPTER 35
Why do phones always ring when you're in the bath? I left it for ages, but it went on, insistent, until at last I wrapped myself in an unsatisfactorily skimpy towel and headed for the living room, at which point it stopped. I swore, and returned to the bathroom where I stepped gratefully back into the warm, soapy water and submerged myself. At which point it rang once more. I got there quicker this time, trailing water.
'Hello?'
There was a short pause, during which I knew for a certainty who was on the other end. I flinched and pulled my damp towel more tightly around me.
'Mirrie?'
At his voice, just the utterance of that single word, I felt the familiar, choking disgust. It was as if the air were suddenly thick and dirty, and I could barely breathe. Sweat prickled on my forehead, and I wiped it away with a corner of my towel.
'Yes.'
'It's me.'
'What do you want?'
'What do I want?'
'Look
'It's what you want, I think.'
'I don't
'Or what you have for me.'
I clutched the receiver and didn't reply.
'Rob just called me,' he went on. 'I hear that you're looking for me.'
A kind of groan escaped me.
'You want to see me.'
'No.'
'You want to give me something. Something I left behind. I wonder what that can be.'
'It's nothing.'
'It must be important, if you're going to all this bother. Mmm, Mirrie?'
'A book,' I stuttered feebly.